Archive for the ‘Silver’ tag

While most of the rest of the Hemmings staff are already Scottsdale veterans, this year was my first time visiting the annual January collector-car extravaganza in Arizona, and I found that in addition to the headline-making cars, there were significant classics, muscle cars and imports that could fit the budgets of almost anyone.

RM Auctions chose a different format for their Scottsdale sale in 2013, arranging the most highly prized cars in a ballroom at the Arizona Biltmore and having no actual block for them to cross.

What I found most interesting was the different vibe at each venue. While my colleague and Arizona local, Jeff Koch, covered the Barrett-Jackson extravaganza, a week-long hammer-slamming-mostly-no-reserve auction extravaganza, he and I both visited Russo and Steele, Gooding & Company and RM Auctions, all at their Scottsdale venues and, finally, the Silver Auctions event at the nearby Fort McDowell casino.

Surrounded by two large storage tents each holding several hundred cars, Russo and Steele’s center tent held the block and throughout the storage tents, you could hear the rapid-fire auctioneer working his magic. Russo’s more-than-700-car selection included a wide variety of cars, with a few pre-war classics, a decent selection of imports and plenty of 1950s, 1960s and 1970s American iron, and for you Corvette fans, fiberglass. The muscle car selection included everything from bone stock originals to spectacularly restored supercars to heavily modified street machines and a few fixer-uppers for those looking for excellent restoration candidates.

When the dust had settled…Who am I kidding? The dust never settles in the desert. After the last hammer had dropped in the main tent, Russo and Steele reported sales of more than $17 million, with a 68 percent sell-through rate. These numbers include sales that may have been finalized after a car had crossed the block without meeting its reserve. The top three sellers were a 1958 Mercedes-Benz 300 SL Roadster at $726,000, a superbly restored 1969 Chevrolet Camaro ZL1 for $605,000 and a 1969 Yenko Douglass Camaro for $253,000.

This 1933 Duesenberg Model J with a Murphy Coachwork-built disappearing-top body garnered $2,695,000 at the Gooding & Company Scottsdale auction.

Our next stop was at Gooding & Company’s much more intimate two-day affair held in a couple of tents erected on the lot of Scottsdale’s upscale Fashion Square shopping area, where Gooding was able to sell 97 percent of its 104 lots at an average price of an astounding $519,727. Billed by David Gooding as the “world’s best auctioneer,” Charlie Ross delivered; his entertaining and disarming style equal parts coaxing and pleading, his British accent adding the sort of gravitas that the typical carnival barker auctioneer just doesn’t have. Had I the money to burn, I am certain he would have charmed me into a car.

This award-winning 1954 Corvette was among the many post-war sports cars offered by Gooding & Company in Scottsdale.

Gooding’s top seller, a 1958 Ferrari 250 GT LWB California Spider at $8,250,000, not only set a record for Gooding in Arizona, but for any car ever sold at auction in the state. RM’s top seller, also a Ferrari, would nip at Gooding’s heels. Other top sellers for Gooding included a 1959 Porsche 718 RSK roadster for $3,135,000 and a 1957 Maserati 150 GT Spider for $3,080,000. In all, the top 12 lots each sold for one million dollars or more. And lest you think that Gooding is reserved for the 1 percent of the 1 percent, the most affordable car sold was a barn-find 1927 Model T roadster pickup that looked its age but remained complete and sold for $26,400.

A stately and elegant 1934 Packard Twelve Convertible Sedan was part of the collection of cars RM auctioned at the Arizona Biltmore.

RM Auctions held its annual Scottsdale event at the Arizona Biltmore Resort & Spa. For 2013, they had no actual auction block, instead conducting the sale in a manner described as a “European salon style” auction. That meant a large ballroom with the most significant cars spread around it and the remainder of the lots outside in the parking lot and lining the road. No cars were rolled in front of the auctioneer and lots were displayed in the big screen in front of the bidders in attendance. In addition, RM changed from two days to just a single day and reduced the number of lots offered from 140 to 84.

Given the stellar results, we would imagine RM officials were happy with the changes. Sales increased from $25.7 million on a 90 percent sell-through rate in 2012 to $36.4 million on an 89 percent sell-through rate for 2013. The average lot sale increased from $204,000 to more than $485,000. The top seller was no shocker. The 1960 Ferrari 250 GT SWB Competizione Berlinetta that sold for $8,140,000 was featured on the cover of RM’s slick and thick catalog for the event. A 1967 Shelby Cobra 427 S/C garnered $2,007,500 and a 1967 Ferrari 275 GTB/4 Berlinetta netted $1,842,500. The top eight lots, five of which hailed from Maranello, each sold for over $1,000,000.

In addition to lots arranged around the bidders inside a large ballroom, RM also displayed many cars outside on the parking lot around the building at the Arizona Biltmore.

In terms of affordability, a near-perfect, recently restored 1931 Cadillac V-12 Coupe sold for $49,500. Perhaps it was the closed roof that kept the price down, as similar vintage open cars in a lesser condition did better, but it seems reasonable to think that it would cost several times that amount to restore a car to that level. At exactly half the price of the Cadillac, you could have bought a super low-mileage, and largely original 1935 Ford Tudor Sedan with a Flathead V-8. It sold for $24,750.

The Silver auction, held at the Fort McDowell Indian Reservation, a short drive east of Scottsdale, was the sort of event that the everyman of this world could expect to find a car. At a place where the top seller was a 1967 Corvette Convertible at $62,640 and the next car on the list, a 1955 Chevrolet Bel Air Hardtop, sold for $46,980, there were plenty of lots amongst the 218 sold that really drew our attention. Perhaps we weren’t looking at concours-winning machines, but instead great deals on drivers. The top five cars were all Chevrolets. Overall, Silver had sales of 218 cars out of a total of 354 cars offered, for a 62 percent sell-through rate and $3,057,858 in total sales, for an average sale of $14,027.

This 1936 Pontiac sedan sold for $14,040 at the Silver Auctions Fort McDowell auction in January.

Although Silver’s field of cars for sale was a different caliber from that found at, say, Gooding or RM, it was a refreshing mix of affordable collector cars, from that top-selling Corvette all the way down to a 1994 BMW 530i – the small V-8 version – with a ton of miles on it for $1,350. With the median sale price at $10,368, there were quite a few buyers who went home with new rides that were safely in the four-figure range. After a couple of days observing a couple of auctions where the bids increased a hundred thousand dollars or more at a clip, it was somewhat refreshing to hear the bids increasing by as little as $50 at a time.

Note: All amounts listed, to the best of our knowledge and research, include the buyer’s premium, which is paid on top of the hammer price. These rates vary, but are usually in the 8 to 10 percent range.

Be sure to swing by the Hemmings blog this week to see what’s happening at
all the big auctions in Scottsdale. We’ll have up-to-the-minute reports from
Barrett-Jackson, R-M, Russo and Steele and Silver this week, from Wednesday
to Saturday night. Check it out at blog.hemmings.com.

(This post originally appeared in the January 19, 2006, issue of the Hemmings eWeekly Newsletter.)